


A Matter of Perspective

by Hexiva



Category: Legion (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Ableist Language, Biphobia, Canon Character of Color, Canon Queer Character, Canon Queer Character of Color, Fix-It, Gen, Homophobia, If Noah Hawley is gonna bring all this up then FINE LET'S HAVE THAT CONVERSATION HERE IT IS, Metafiction, Past Rape/Non-con, Post Season 2, Racism, Spoilers for the end of S2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 03:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15720921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexiva/pseuds/Hexiva
Summary: Farouk and David talk about the forces that affect their narrative.





	A Matter of Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> Hover over the foreign language text for translations. Also, be aware of the tags. Nothing bad happens in this fic but they do talk about all sorts of horrible things.

_“I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way.”  
_

_ \-- _ **_Who Framed Roger Rabbit_ ** **(1988)**

David goes to sleep and finds himself sitting in an empty movie theatre. He gets up from his seat and looks around. A moment ago he was sleeping in a motel, with Lenny beside him, on the run from Division 3 and Summerland and every friend he ever had. 

“Be calm,” says an all-too familiar voice. “We are not here to dance. I only wish to talk.” Amahl Farouk emerges from the shadows, and looks up at the screen. The screen is black, but still lit from behind.

“I don’t want to talk to you!” David hisses. “You ruined my life.”

“You ruined your own life,” Farouk insists. “I simply gave you the last push,  _ der letzte Anstoß.” _

“How is it,” David snaps, “That when you try to kill me, it’s my fault, but when my dad tries to kill you, it’s somehow his fault? Or, wait, it’s  _ my  _ fault again, even though I wasn’t even born yet, because who’d you decide to torture for it? Huh? Was it my dad? No, it was  _ me  _ again.”

“Torture is such a strong word. I never laid a hand on you,” Farouk says, smiling.

“You - you didn’t  _ have hands,  _ you were  _ inside my body!”  _ David grips his head with both hands. He’s lucky, he thinks, that Farouk is such an infuriating jackass, because if he weren’t, David might have time to remember that he’s actually really terrified of the man. If “man” is the right word.

Farouk watches him silently for a moment, and then looks back up at the screen. “I will not apologize for doing what I had to to survive. If I had had the choice to take my revenge on your father,  _ natürlich _ , I would have done it. That is why you hurt her, is it not?”

David feels a wave of nausea overtake him. He knows Farouk is talking about Syd. “I didn’t hurt her. I - I fixed her. I took out the poison  _ you  _ put in her head.”

“Without her consent,” Farouk points out, and then chuckles, softly. “You are so like your father, my dear. Everything I had done, he had done. Do you know who your mother was? Do you ever wonder if she loved your father?” He takes a step closer. “If she had any choice in that?”

“S - Stop it!” David says, his hands clenching into fists. “My father wasn’t like you!”

“How would you know?” Farouk asks. “There is no vile thing I have done that he had not. But I am the villain, and he is the hero. Why?”

“Maybe it’s because  _ you’re  _ the one that  _ tormented me for thirty years,”  _ David bites out. “You’re right, okay? I never knew my dad. I don’t have a clue what he was like. But I know - I know  _ you.  _ I have enough reason to hate you, right there.”

Farouk waves this off. “I am not talking about you. All of them, your - what is the word? - ‘fair-weather friends’ - they believe he is the hero too. And so did his followers, his little  _ cult.  _ The world sees him as the hero, and you and I as the villains. Why? What makes us different?”

“Because you manipulated my friends into hating me,” David snaps.

Farouk shrugs. “Maybe. But I did not have to - ” He taps his temple. “Cheat, to do it. They believed me.  _ Me,  _ der König der Schatten.  _ Bad zaats.  _ Why? Because I told them the lie they had been primed their entire life to believe. That they should fear the madman.” 

Behind them, the screen lights up, showing a scene from a black-and-white movie - a young man with a lopsided grin, talking to himself.

“Do you remember this movie?” Farouk asks, softly. “We watched it together.  _ ‘Psycho _ .’ A foundational masterpiece.”

“You mean I watched it while you were possessing me,” David says, but he’s already feeling sick to his stomach, he already sees where Farouk is going with this.

“And what a title!” Farouk proclaims, ignoring David. “Does it stand for ‘psychopath’ or ‘psychotic’? Well, why choose? They are one and the same, are they not? The madmen. The ‘crazies.’ The ones who hear voices, the ones who kill people - of course one proceeds naturally from the other.”

“I - I’m not a killer,” David stammers out.

“Don’t tell me,” Farouk says, softly. The scene switches, and now the screen is showing the trial, David trapped in the bubble, lit in harsh black and white like a Hitchcock film. “Tell them.”

On the screen, Syd says,  _ “To think that you were sick for all those years, and then to be told that it was a lie, that you have these powers.This monster in your head, everything Melanie said, that you weren't mentally ill - when the truth is - you're both.” _

“No, no, no,  _ no,  _ I don’t want, I don’t want to see this again,” David says, backing away from the screen. He knocks into the theatre seats, stumbles, falls to the ground.

_ “You're upset. Your mind can't reconcile the person we see with the person you think you are,”  _ Cary says. 

_ “But we can help,” _ Syd says.  _ “Medicine and therapy.” _

“You raped her,” Farouk says, “And she talks of therapy. She wants to accuse you of a great moral wrong, and what she says is, ‘ _du bist krank._ ’ Because they are one and the same to her, sickness and abuse. To be the madman is to be the villain. This is the lie that I told them, and they believed me because they have been told the same lie all their lives. And I knew, because the same has been done to me.”

“So what, now you’re crazy too?” David snaps.

Farouk chuckles and shakes his head. “No. I am not the madman. I’m the villain on two fronts, you see. On the one hand I am the Arab, the greedy sheik, the fanatic terrorist. On the other I am the queer, the depraved fiend, the pervert who threatens both men and women.” The screen changes again, this time to a much older movie, a silent one. A man flounces into a bar, and the title card informs the audience,  _ “This is Clarence, one of God’s mistakes in a county where men are men.”  _

“There are no heroes like me,” Farouk says, softly. “There are no heroes like you.”

“That’s - that’s not real,” David insists, “It’s just a movie. Just - just a story.”

Farouk smiles. “Our life is a story too,  _ joonam. _ We are all shaped by the stories we tell.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” David snaps. “Go back and get drugged out of my mind? Or just give in and become the Shadow King 2.0?” He shakes his head. “Why am I asking  _ you  _ this? This is, is - crazy.”

_ “You can lie to me, but you cannot lie to yourself,”  _ Farouk says, in Farsi.  _ “You know I am telling the truth.” _

“No,” David mutters, “No, no, this isn’t right, I - I - I’m a good person,  _ I deserve to be loved - ” _

“You are,” Farouk says. “You do.”

David freezes in place, and swallows. Even coming from Farouk, the words shake him to his core. To hear someone else say, out loud, what he had spent thirty years trying to convince himself of - it hurt, like stretching out a muscle too long tense.

Farouk approaches him slowly, as if he’s a frightened animal, and crouches down next to him.  _ “I am offering you another chance,”  _ he says in Farsi, reaching out his hand.  _ “Come with me.  _ You and I - let us show them that we are more than the madman and the Arab.”

David stares at the hand, his eyes wide. “How - why - why would I trust  _ you?”  _ he demands. “Of all people?”

“Because I am the only one who has walked this path before,” Farouk says. “I am the only one who will not believe the lie.”

David swallows. And then, his fingers shaking, he reaches out to take Farouk’s hand.

**Author's Note:**

> How many fanfics where the characters sit around and discuss media theory can I write before my readers die of boredom? Only time can tell.
> 
> Anyway, this story is inspired by that awkward scene where Farouk starts talking about how he's a PoC villain who's being persecuted by blonde-haired, blue-eyed heroes. The actual scene kind of fell flat for me - within the narrative, Farouk _still_ hasn't displayed a single sympathetic characteristic, he's a rapist, he's a parasite, he's an abuser. Of course white guys think he's the villain, because that is the way he has been written! The only way it works is on a meta level; if Farouk is actually calling out his own writers for making the dubious decision to cast a queer Middle-Eastern man as the villain of their show in this political climate (and then have him claim he's "a refugee," what even was that supposed to be?!). 
> 
> I don't really think that's what the writers meant it to be. I think season 2 plays with a lot of "deep" ideas that the writers don't quite understand. But here's my take on that reading: Farouk borderline breaking the fourth wall to call the writers out.
> 
>  **Translations:**  
>  der letzte Anstoß - the final impulse  
> natürlich - of course  
> der König der Schatten - The King of Shadows  
> Bad zaats - villain  
> du bist krank - you are sick  
> joonam - my dear


End file.
